


Eleventh of December

by Enchantable



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Self-Hatred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-17
Updated: 2013-08-17
Packaged: 2017-12-23 19:48:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/930372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enchantable/pseuds/Enchantable
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raleigh celebrates his birthday the only way he knows how anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eleventh of December

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Fluff. Just. Fluffy fluffiness. With scrapes and bruises and quiet comforting kisses to make the hurt go away :3

He hobbles into their room at four in the morning. 

Mako is curled up in bed, her back pressed against the wall. Raleigh looks at her and feels ten times an ass because she’s clearly been waiting for him and he’s just spent the past week pushing her away. For all her slightness and quietness, Mako has the strength and stubbornness of an anchored Jaeger. Unfortunately so does he. He swipes a hand through his hair and winces when the cut above his eyebrow pulls. He tries to get to the bathroom quietly, but the world rocks and he staggers. 

Mako’s eyes snap open instantly as she pushes herself up in one smooth motion. Raleigh freezes as their eyes lock in the darkness. He can’t move as she gets to her feet instantly, before he can hide away. The light from the bathroom makes him blink and he knows it makes everything look so much worse. Mako’s features give away nothing but Raleigh only has one eye to look out of. 

She pushes him into the chair. Her hand doesn’t linger on him and his heart aches as she silently goes to the bathroom. Maybe they aren’t speaking now, Raleigh wouldn’t blame her if that was the case. She puts the kit on the bed and he scoots the chair forward, ignoring the way her eyes sharpen. 

She soaks the cotton ball in antiseptic as she comes to his face and slowly begins to clean the cuts on his face. He hisses through his teeth as his eyebrow stings but her hand cups his jaw and he realizes this is the most non-aggressive physical contact he’s had in four days. 

"You look terrible," she tells him.

"Yeah but you should see the other guy," he says and tries to smile before she glares at him. He deserves much worse, “I’m sorry," he tries. 

"You’re drunk," she says. 

"Buzzed," he corrects, “I stopped being drunk hours ago," he looks at her, “but I am sorry."

The cotton ball pauses before she resumes cleaning his cut. His tongue darts across his bottom lip and he winces at the taste of blood and antiseptic. She turns his head to get a better angle and he sees the faded plans tacked up onto the wall. Original plans of Gipsy Danger he doesn’t think he’ll ever know how she got. Her birthday present to him. He fights to keep his eye open before he has to close it as she examines the cut.

"You miss him," she says finally. 

"Every damn day," he says, “but it doesn’t give me the right to be an ass to—to you," he continues, “Truth is Yanc would probably be the one kicking mine after the last couple of days."

"You would deserve it," she tells him and he laughs. 

"You wanna get the iodine?"

"I don’t want to hurt you more," she replies fitting a bandage over his eye before moving to his knuckles and he knows she’s not just talking about the scrapes he has from a half hearted bar fight. 

He sighs and she ducks her head, telling herself that she is being silly. She just cannot stand how useless she feels, which immediately makes her feel more useless because the last thing Raleigh needs is for her to get upset over something she understands all too well. But Raleigh always wears his emotions close to the surface, in a way she’s given everything to not do anymore. And when he closes himself off and goes quiet and still she wants to shake him until that spark comes back into his eyes. 

She glances up but it’s still gone. So she ducks her head and continues to pick the glass out of his knuckles. It isn’t like him to miss a punch, even drunk, and Mako knows it wasn’t just liquor that made his motions sloppy. She pulls out the last of the glass with a steady hand but before she can pull hers away his fingers wrap around the top of her hand. She hears the plea, even though the words never leave his lips. 

She’s not mad at him, not really. The truth is that she feels the echoes in her head, like they’re still in the drift. Every time he pushes she wants to push as well, every time he hurts she feels it too. It scares her, like she isn’t her own person anymore. Stacker told her that her thoughts were too chaotic, her heart too dark for someone to be compatible with her. Of those three things he was wrong about one only. 

His thumb rubs gently across her knuckles. She raises her eyes to meet his, trying to find the words she wants to say. She’s bilingual, but her purest emotions are always easiest to say in Japanese. She turns her hand over in his, her tongue darting out to run across her lips before she looks down at his bloody hand and her clean one. 

"I don’t need you to protect me," she whispers finally, “not from yourself."

He seems to crumple at that. There are things they know about each other that they do not say. When they don’t drift they try to let each other have that lie, that there are parts the other does not know. His fingers shift and gently thread through hers. His other hand reaches out and hooks under her chin, lifting her eyes to his. She lets their eyes meet and is surprised to see tears in his. 

"I miss him," he says and his voice is hoarse around the words, “we were supposed to die together." 

Mako drops his hand and moves forward, wrapping her arms around him and pulling him to her. His hands wrap around her as his face presses into her stomach. She holds him tightly against her, even as his shoulders tremble and then shake. She feels the wetness against her shirt but she just holds him tighter as he sobs. 

Wrapped in her arms, Raleigh clings to her like she’s the only real thing in the world. He can barely breath because once the tears start it’s impossible to stop. He’s got five years worth of them in him, five awful birthdays that he’s supposed to be buying his older brother drinks on and calling him old man. But now he’s older than Yancy will ever be and the thought makes him sob harder as Mako holds him tightly. 

They’re like that for a long time. Mako just lets him cry, holding him so tight that when he gasps unsteadily for air he can feel the strength in her arms. Even when the tears slow, she holds him to her, her fingers gently playing with the air at the nape of his neck. He pulls back first and looks up at her, even though he doesn’t really have to look that far. She ducks down and presses her lips to the tears on his cheeks, kissing them away. 

He turns his face to her and captures her lips. The mint of her toothpaste makes him wince because he’s pretty sure he tastes awful. But she kisses him insistently, the sharp lick of pain from his split lip not deterring them. His hands wind about her waist as he pulls her towards him until she’s settled in his lap. Finally they pull back and she rests her forehead against his. 

"You should have died together," she says to him in Japanese, “but I’m grateful you didn’t."

He opens his eyes and looks at her and it’s like she knows the guilt he feels—because she does. Because he clung to the belief that it was wrong and awful for him to have survived for every second of every day until she glared at him from behind a clipboard and for the first time he felt hope again. Because Yancy is dead and he should want to be with him, but he doesn’t. Not yet. Not for a really long time. But he doesn’t have the words to say that so he just tucks an errant lock of blue hair behind her ear and smiles for the first time in days. 

"Me too," he say finally.


End file.
